"A Trying Game, but Fun!"

Graphics: 7/10
For a 1999 game, the graphics are pretty good. While the surfaces of the walls don't have very much texture to them, the designs on the surfaces are pretty well done. Despite the poor texturing on the walls, the water and lava do have amazing texture to them, as well as vibrant color. The other kinds of floor are pretty neat looking too, especially the ice-themed ones. The buildings look really cool and have the trademark LEGO studs sticking out, but still avoid looking blocky. My only complaint here is that the buildings don't look any different when you upgrade them. The vehicles are definitely spiffy, and are probably the best graphics in the game: The lighting on the lasers are super cool, the blur effects on the propellers are spot-on, the lighting is great, and there's a really good contrast between simplicity and details; it's not overly exotic, but it's not obnoxiously plain, either. The Rock Raiders you teleport down are a little bit plain too, but they're not by any means bad. The biggest mistakes in the graphic design is the lack of realism to it. For instance, if there's two squares of water next to each other, you can clearly see the edges of the water cut off at a 90 degree angle. No programming is done to curve the corners into something representing a feasible pond or puddle. Another thing that got on my nerves was that every wall that's the same kind of rock is a carbon copy! It would have looked way nicer if there had been some kind of tesselation texture that was masked randomly over the wall-It would have made the walls look more realistic. The same applies for rubble on the ground; the rocks splayed over the surface of a square of rubble are the exact same when each rock could have very simply been coded to appear at a random spot in the square, but instead you are always clearing a different instance of the exact same rubble pile. On a side note, the animation was good, though. There was good easing and the movements were realistic. While a lot of old games get lazy in terms of animation, this game has very fine running loops, teleporting animatics, etc.

Music/Sound: 8/10
The music is pretty good. I like the ambiance to it, yet it's not boring. While mellow, it works for both the run-of-the-mill drilling and shooting Rock Monsters into pieces. There are three tracks to the soundtrack which span a total of about 10 minutes, but despite how many times it'll loop, it doesn't get repetitive. The sound effects can be, though. In a few levels there are landslides nonstop, and you keep getting a notification in the corner with an audio voice saying "A landslide has occurred." If that's a major problem in that particular level, the same recording of the same voice will drive you off the wall. On the other hand, the voices for other things can get pretty amusing. Roll over water or a Rapid Rider vehicle and you get this maniacal voice notifying you of what you've rolled over. Roll over a Small Mobile Laser Cutter or a Small Digger and you get this really cheesy African-American voicing. Roll over a Tool Store and you get and endlessly amusing geek voice. You get the point. If I had to come up with a name for the style in which this game was voiced, I would call it "One of Each". The exaggerated voices used to be a little offensive, but they're still pretty funny.

Play Control: 6/10
Controlling your characters and the game can be a bit frustrating. You can individually order a Rock Raider to drill a certain wall, but you can't order them to reinforce it in the same way. You have to roll over a Rock Raider for a long time for it to show which tools they have and what they're trained in. The worst is when you move around the screen by moving the mouse to the edge of the screen. When the camera moves, it's so damn slow. While a few modern games allow you to pan the screen faster by moving your mouse further and further to the edge of the screen, the panning for LEGO Rock Raiders only has one speed. The camera can also be obnoxious. For both the scanner view and normal view of the game, you can never zoom out far enough. Next, the Rock Raiders are pretty stupid. If you have a Rock Monster attacking your base and a far off Rock Monster sleeping, and you activate Action Stations to get your Rock Raiders to attack the Rock Monster, some of them are stupid enough to run all the way over to the sleeping Rock Monster and shoot at it while your base is reduced to shambles. Additionally, in tough missions where you switch Priorities quickly, your Rock Raiders have a horrible tendency of acting as if the priorities were never changed; they'll keep doing what they were before. Another thing that pissed me off was the first-person mode. It's really fun to drive around or walk around as one of your own Rock Raiders, but you can only walk and drill in first-person mode. You can't clear rubble or repair walls or pick up Energy Crystals or Ore, which is a huge hassle since your Rock Raiders are already pretty stupid.

Story: 9/10
It wasn't perfect, but I found myself liking the story a lot. Basically some spacecraft is stranded on an alien planet and you're collecting resources to power the ship and get back home. There isn't much character development in it, nor any plot twists, but there are several cutscenes throughout the game that are really funny (in a stupid kind of way). Although nothing is too vulgar for young audience, the cutscenes and storyline are enjoyable for someone in their later years as well.

Replay Value: 8/10
Replay value is pretty dependent on how perfectionist you are. At the end of each mission you get a grading percentage on how well you did, and after you beat all of the missions you can redo them to try and achieve higher scores. If you're self-motivated, you could play this game almost forever, but if you work for rewards, you might not get a lot out of this game. There aren't any "secret" cutscenes to be unlocked after getting a high average score, or any backgrounds you can download for you computer. If you're just trying to make it through all of the missions, the game can keep you occupied for a quite a while if you're learning the ropes and tricks to use. Since the problems you face in each mission are radically different, few levels are tedious and almost every level has some attention-catching feature to it, especially the later missions.

Gameplay: 9/10
A lot of reviews have called this game frustrating and boring, and while they can be when you're still new to the game, you can enjoy the game a lot once you're into it. While the mission objectives are pretty much the same throughout all 25 missions, the conditions you're working in and the environments are really cool. Another neat thing is the magnitude of the caverns and the amount of activity going on. While the game isn't too memory intensive on your computer, you usually end up having to play offense and defense at the same time. The play control (see above) was a little annoying, but if you look past that the game is a blast. One strange thing is that a lot of features in the game are entirely unnecessary, even for the toughest missions. The big vehicles are ridiculously slow, and some of the more complex buildings take tons of resources without very much of a payoff for building them. Also, you can't save your file in the middle of a mission, meaning no matter how long it takes to beat it, you have to finish it if you want to save. My last complaint is the stupidity of the Rock Raiders. The AI is incredibly poor, even when you list the priorities to them one by one.

Final Recommendation:
I would recommend this game to a friend, but it's definitely not for everyone. This game can try your patience a lot if you're not a hardcore gamer, and some missions can take over two hours to complete. The missions are demanding, but if you like running around and fixing problems like a spaz, this is probably the game for you.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 04/02/10

Game Release: LEGO Rock Raiders (US, 11/30/99)